[mythtv-users] Hardware plans

[Gordon McCrae]

On 14/04/10 21:40, jedi wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 02:20:36PM -0600, Brian Wood wrote:
>   
>> On Wednesday 14 April 2010 02:00:05 pm Gordon McCrae wrote:
>>     
>>> On 14/04/10 20:47, jedi wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 09:07:27AM -0700, Paul Bender wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> On 4/14/2010 12:00 AM, Nick Rout wrote:
>>>>>           
>>>>>> On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 3:41 PM, Paul Bender<pebender at san.rr.com>  
>>>>>>             
>> wrote:
>>     
>>>>>>> On 4/13/2010 8:15 PM, kyle polich wrote:
>>>>>>>               
>>>>>>>> I have been researching Myth and the right hardware set up for a
>>>>>>>> little while and I believe I can now make an informed purchase, but I
>>>>>>>> wanted to put my thoughts out there to the community to see if there
>>>>>>>> were any flaws in my design or perhaps better advice.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I want this machine to function as my DVR and media center.  Since it
>>>>>>>> will be in the living room, I'd like something with a nice form
>>>>>>>> factor.  I believe the Meerkat ION (with a few upgrades) from
>>>>>>>> System76 is an ideal piece of hardware for a fair price.  Anyone
>>>>>>>> running such a set up now?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Any counter-proposals on what I might want to buy?
>>>>>>>>                 
>>>>>>> As you have not specified the format or resolution of the content that
>>>>>>> you will be playing, it is not possible to decide whether the ION
>>>>>>> hardware decoding is sufficient or whether you need either ION 2
>>>>>>> hardware decoding or software decoding.
>>>>>>>               
>>>>> DivX and MPEG4 part 2 require feature set C, which the current ION
>>>>> does not have.
>>>>>           
>>>>     The Atom can handle SD divx. It will probably not be able to handle
>>>> divx in HD though.
>>>>         
> [deletia]
>   
>>> I understand that if no-one has tried a brand new device, or it's not
>>> out yet, then it's perfectly valid for us all to speculate, offer
>>> suggestions, or opinions on whether or not something should or shouldn't
>>> work, however in the face of so many people actually having bought the
>>> kit in question, I don't understand why some folks still insist on
>>> saying it shouldn't work.
>>>       
>     A Revo struggles to do divx in SD (but manages to squeak by).
>
>     You don't need to do a MythBusters style test to see where that's going.
>
>   
>>> Just my 2p.
>>>       
>> My own 2p is: My Revo works :-)
>>
>> I agree with you in the main, but it does make sense to point out when 
>> something is "unsupported". There is a difference between "works" and 
>> "supported".
>>
>> But I guess in the case of the Revo, nothing running under Linux is 
>> technically "supported" by Acer.
>>
>> There are certainly enough owners of Revos and other ION devices on this list 
>> that we should be able to get pretty reliable information, and I think we 
>> have.
>>     
I can only suggest there something iffy in your config / build if you
can't get SD DIVX to play on a REVO. I have four of them (two single
core, two dual core) and they all happily play SD DIVX (converted from
MythTV recordings with mencoder) and 720p DIVX. I even have a couple of
converted Wyse V50 thin clients that can happily play SD DIVX, and these
things are seriously slow, so don't know why you would have a problem
playing this sort of file with a REVO, what's your config details?

SD DIVX consumes 38% CPU, 720p DIVX consumes 80%.

Also, note, I'm not using VDPAU, this is just the ATOM, I've just not
hit anything yet that I need to use VDPAU for, and have the general
policy of not changing anything until I feel I need to. As 99.99% of my
video archive is SD, VDPAU is something I'll leave until I migrate to 0.23.

Cheers
Gordon